China’s Government has set the country’s 2016 growth target at between 6.5 percent and 7 percent, Premier Li Keqiang announced on Saturday.
Mr Li was speaking at the fourth session of the 12th National People’s Congress.
“The aim of maintaining stable growth is primarily to ensure employment and [to] promote the people’s well-being; and a growth rate of between 6.5 percent and 7 percent will allow for relatively full employment,” Mr Li said, as quoted by Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua.
China’s Premier stressed the 2016 target was in line with the Government’s goal of building a “moderately prosperous society”. He also said the target takes into account the need to advance structural reform, Xinhua added.
“The larger the economy grows, the greater the difficulty of achieving growth,” Mr Li warned in the report presented to the annual parliamentary session.
Last year, the Chinese economy grew by 6.9 percent year-on-year, the slowest annual expansion in the past 25 years.
